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Al-Akhbar is currently going through a transitional phase whereby the English website is available for Archival purposes only. All new content will be published in Arabic on the main website (www.al-akhbar.com).

Achcar should not have cited the writings of Bayan Nuwayhed Al-Hout on any matter (p. 152) for she, unfortunately, has approvingly cited the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion (her father was a major promoter of the Protocols) in her book: “Filastin: Al-Qadiyyah.Ash- Sha`b. Al-Hadarah.” Achcar should not have missed that.

Last week began with former AIPAC flack Josh Block accusing writers at two progressive think tanks in Washington of advancing the "new" anti-Semitism, conflating their criticisms of Israeli policies with straightforward Jew-hatred.

On Islamic matters, Gilbert Achcar does not come across as knowledgeable as he uses a language that is employed in standard stereotyping Western books on Islam. He looks at Islam too much through the prism of Christian history and its dichotomies and categories (p. 104). He discusses Wahhabism and assumes it is synonymous with Hanbalism (p. 105), when the founder of Wahhabism wanted his new school to be above and beyond the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence.

Gilbert Achcar’s book, The Arabs and the Holocaust, is a very good study of the subject of Arab attitudes toward the Holocaust. First, I must confess that Achcar and I engaged in a lengthy intellectual/political duel on the pages of Al-Akhbar newspaper in Lebanon. Our debate was related to the subject of his study.

The documentary How to Start a Revolution by Ruaridh Arrow was screened at the Zionist Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, among other places presumably. It comes at a time when Foreign Policy magazine has decided that Gene Sharp “has inspired Arab Spring protesters.” It all started with a front page story in The New York Times, which decided—without any evidence whatsoever—that Gene Sharp has inspired a non-violent revolution throughout the Arab world.

Just as it pulled its diplomatic corps from Iran, Germany approved the sale of a Dolphin attack submarine to the Israeli navy. The submarine, which Israel will receive at a steep discount subsidized by German taxpayers, will be able to carry several tactical nuclear cruise missiles.

This is the dominant story now – Islamists are winning all over the Arab world. It is not being mentioned that there are many factors working in their favor. They have been organized for decades while some leftists and liberals have just started. It is not mentioned that Islamists have been benefiting from Gulf money and have utilized that external funding effectively.

Bahrain is the forgotten uprising. It does not seem to figure on the agenda of any state or party. Few still remember that the Syrian regime had also supported the suppression of the Bahraini uprising: it even supported the Saudi/UAE military intervention (Syria was hoping to win favor with Saudi Arabia and GCC members and to count on their support in a future suppression within its own borders).

So Qatar launched Al Jazeera in order to break through the media monopoly of the House of Saud (which was imposed after 1990 when Khalid Bin Sultan toured world capitals to buy all Arab media). Iraqi and Libyan money produced rival media outlets but funding ended by the early 1990s.